Extra large low coffee table

This is from Ran, who wanted a big, low coffee table, but couldn’t find one that fitted the two requirements. So he hacks one from Lack shelves. I love the size and the white strip. It would work great with Capita legs too.

He says, “I thought about using a desk surface and adjustable feet, but finally I had the idea of using the Lack shelves – they are cheaper and come in better colors.

I made this from the Lack shelving. I used five shelves as the surface and the wall mounts were used as legs. The small white foamy things at the bottom are also from Ikea – I don’t remember their name though.

It isn’t a very clean hack – I could have done a better job with putting the surface together, but I just used two pieces of scrap wood I found in the trash outside my apartment and some wood glue, and used about three different kinds of screws for the mounts cause I didn’t have enough of any one kind. It’s short enough that you can never see the bottom unless you crawl under it, so it doesn’t matter.

The final result is quite nice though – it’s fairly stable and quite cheap considering how big it is. While it’s not as wide as some coffee tables I saw, it’s much deeper and that’s harder to come by. Since the Lack shelves come in many colors (at least in Israel they do), there are a lot of variations you can make with this setup.”

19 Responses

I have spent a great deal of time in looking for the right table but something or the other would not meet my requirement and I decided to get some planks or stuff and do it on my own when I came across this.

Next time, cut a piece of mdf two inches smaller all around than your table. Center it on the back of the shelves then glue/screw the shelves to that support. With the one piece base, it will be much more stable. Plus mdf takes paint wonderfully and you can paint it to match the table color or the legs as you choose (I’d do black). By having the base shorter all around, the edges of the mdf won’t show.

I should note that it is in fact Red with a white stripe – I guess the real color got washed out in the photo. And the legs are indeed the mounting brackets that come with the shelves.

I’ve had it for a few months now, I must say that the original design with the very low quality wood and legs made from brackets doesn’t work as well as I expected it too. It can hold anything you put on it, it’s just not very stable when moving it.

Sometime in the future I plan on redoing it on a bigger strip of wood with better legs – having so many obstacles underneath it makes cleaning a real hassle.